COLD LAKE, Alta. – A former Canadian Forces member on a base in northeastern Alberta has been sentenced to three years in a federal penitentiary for assaulting three teenage girl cadets at a summer camp.

The three victims, aged 16 to 19, were assaulted on Aug. 1, 2010 while attending a cadet training camp in Cold Lake, Alta., 300 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

Ex-Cpl. Alex Lough, a former member of 1 Air Maintenance Squadron at CFB Cold Lake, will serve 34 months, having been given two months off his sentence for time already served.

Lough switched his plea to guilty on the fourth day of the trial, after witnesses testified against him.

Commander Peter Lamont, the judge presiding over the court martial at CFB Cold Lake, told the court that around 3 a.m. that night, a drunken Lough drove to the unlocked buildings where victims were sleeping.

He entered a building, found a young woman and pinned her down on the bed. She kicked him off and he fled. Afterwards, she called 911.

Lough then broke into another building and assaulted another young cadet before moving on his third and final victim, a cadet instructor, in a separate building.

The instructor tried to resist, but Lough told her that if she continued to resist his advances, he would assault someone else.

She cried out, "Stop, not my girls."

The judge told the court that she was forced to strip naked, at which point Lough rubbed her body.

The court heard that Lough was frightened off from continuing the assault by the lights of the arriving military police, who arrested him as he was trying to get into his car to drive away.

The defence noted that Lough was abusing alcohol at the time and had attended a treatment facility the prior year.

The airman was released from his duties last June because of the charges put against him, said CFB Cold Lake Commander Col. Patrice Laroche.